A truck laden with nitric acid and explosives overturned before the driver could attack a joint security station operated by US and Iraqi troops north of Baghdad, the US military said on Tuesday. In a statement, the US military said a security patrol went to assist the driver of the truck after it overturned and found it loaded with eight containers of nitric acid and explosives. It said the driver confessed he had been paid to attack the joint security station in Mushada, which also houses the townÂ’s police station, north of Baghdad.
Separately, a group linked to Al Qaeda said on Tuesday it had decided to kill 20 Iraqi troops and policemen whom it had kidnapped, after the government failed to meet a deadline to free female prisoners. “Our Islamic court ... has ruled (to execute) them and we shall soon issue pictures of it,” said the Internet posting from the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq.
On Saturday, the group said it was giving the government 48 hours to free all women held in IraqÂ’s prisons, saying otherwise it would kill the 20 men, whose pictures it published. It also demanded that the government hand over to it Interior Ministry agents accused of involvement in the widely publicised alleged rape of a woman and other reported rapes and civilian killings.
SaturdayÂ’s statement said the 20 men of various ranks, one of whom was identified by his Interior Ministry identification card as a security unit commander, had been abducted northeast of Baghdad. It did not give the date of the kidnappings.
The US military said it captured eight suspected insurgents on Tuesday in raids near Fallujah and Baghdad. Six suspects detained in Karmah, a village northeast of Fallujah, allegedly had ties to Al Qaeda, the US military said in a statement. Two suspects detained in Baghdad were accused of providing and transporting materials for car bombs, it said.
Five more US troops have been killed in a series of attacks in Iraq, the military reported on Tuesday, taking the losses to 50 in this month alone. Two marines were killed on Monday in combat operations in the western province of Anbar, the military said. Another two soldiers were killed and two wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Fallujah also in Anbar on Saturday. Another soldier died when hit by an explosively-formed projectile, a kind of a roadside bomb, in southern Baghdad on Monday, a separate statement from the military said.